“Today a phase of my political life ends,” said Sergio Massa this Sunday evening in the midst of Peronist militancy. It took a few more minutes for Argentina to learn that the far-right Javier Milei had won the election by 11 percentage points, but the situation was already clear. Massa conceded defeat, thanked the efforts of a coalition that came together to make him a competitive candidate despite being minister of a struggling economy, and announced he would resign. He could have been president, but now he won’t even be leader of the opposition. Like his old enemy and final ally Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Massa will not take a position when Milei assumes the presidency on December 10. Both were the last two great leaders of Peronism in the last 15 years, which now faces an unprecedented panorama: with the grouping of the traditional right after the emergence of Milei, the great popular movement of Argentina is fighting against time to rearm itself.
Massa was an emergency candidate. As leader of a party he founded in 2015 to challenge Kirchnerism for power, his defeat by liberal Mauricio Macri united them in the following elections to bring Peronism back to power. Massa was the leader of the third branch of the coalition, which returned to government in 2019. As President of the Chamber of Deputies, he was a comfortable spectator of the fight between the President Alberto Fernández and his Vice President Cristina Kirchner until July 2022, when he called on the Ministry of Economy to stop the bullets with his political back. He knew it was his last chance, and he did not fail: a year after taking office as minister, he was named presidential candidate almost immediately after the electoral lists were closed.
Peronism needed “unity” to defeat Milei and an empowered traditional right. And Massa, that tough, anti-crime politician, economically pragmatic and with business and foreign relations that Kirchnerist militancy did not like, was anointed. Massa was the candidate for this election campaign: while Argentina moved to the right, talking about adjusting government spending and arming the population in the face of insecurity, Peronism brought its horse into the race.
Sergio Massa during the speech acknowledging his electoral defeat in Buenos Aires. ADRIANO MACHADO (Portal)
Only one man stood his ground. “Support yes, blank check no,” summed up one of the voices of the left-wing Peronism that had opposed him, the social leader Juan Grabois. Grabois challenged Massa in the primary on behalf of Cristina Kirchner. He got his own millions of votes, opening up one of the unknowns that surrounds Peronism today. Massa had to maintain a delicate balance as president: between appealing to the center-right in the “unity government” he proposed and accommodating his own sector, which would scrutinize him. Defeated, his step aside leaves Peronism headless at a crucial moment.
On paper, Peronism will be the main opposition party: it has retained the first minority in Congress. But no one will have the necessary majority. Milei will govern with his party as a third parliamentary force and will need more than the support of his new partner, former President Macri, to push through his agenda. Since much of the political trend is against it, even if Milei is the opposite, what Peronism can achieve as a competitive opposition is another unknown.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner votes in Río Gallegos on the morning of November 19th. STRINGER (Portal)
With Kirchner locked up in her home in Patagonia, Massa sowing uncertainty about her future, and President Alberto Fernández out of power and out of the picture for almost a year, the great visible face of Peronism rising to the challenge will be His governor of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, who retained power in the country’s most populous province. Kicillof, Cristina Kirchner’s former economics minister, knows the challenge that lies ahead of us: for months he has been calling for people to stop “living on Perón, Evita, Néstor and Cristina” and instead “build a new utopia.” “We have to compose a new song and not sing one we all know,” he demanded in September. “I am not dedicated to music, I am a fighter and leader,” replied another of the strong men who will fight today, the son of former president and national deputy Máximo Kirchner.
Kicillof will rule the great bastion alone. As Kirchnerism – or what’s left of it – takes hold in Buenos Aires, other provinces that rely on national tax revenues will have no choice but to sit at Milei’s table. Among them are those who respond to the vice president, such as Tierra del Fuego in the south, La Pampa in the center or Santiago del Estero in the north. There are also those of federal Peronism, more conservative and opposed to the one led by former President Kirchner for almost two decades, such as Córdoba, a large agricultural export center that has been transformed into a bastion of Milei at the national level – or Salta at the national level Plain northern Andean region. Federal Peronism has been trying to project its own leadership for years. Now you have another chance.
“First the country, then the movement and then the men” is one of the slogans on which General Juan Domingo Perón built his political movement. The country just said “no” to them in the elections and the movement is in disarray. The men responsible for its construction are still a mystery.